A college teacher in Weifang city of Shandong province became so obsessed with a popular online farming game that his desperate wife, unable to handle his obsession any longer, set fire to their home. The wife, surnamed Chen, said her husband, a 45-year old administrator at a local college who was a model teacher only a month ago, had become obsessed with the Happy Farm game on Kaixin.com (a popular social networking site in China). Since then, everything changed about the husband Chen had knew and loved – the obsession with the game shattered their once happy and peaceful married life.

Screenshot of a popular online farming game in China

According to Chen, she started noticed changes in her husband a month earlier, after she returned back from visiting her parents: “He was a changed person. He thought about “farming” while he was awake and while he was asleep. Sometimes he even talks in his sleep about how many minutes until the grapes are ripe enough for harvest.” Chen stated that her husband has always been a creature of habit, stuck by his daily routine, and was a model husband, “He'll spend his weekends going grocery shopping with me, play with our child, and help around the house.” However, Chen soon found her husband laboring in front of his computer at the wee hours of 2 and 3 in the morning, just so he could harvest his crops on his virtual farm. “One time I find him writing beside our 3-year old, and I thought that he was teaching our child how to write. Only when I got close did I find out that he was writing schedules for his crops, listing times about when to harvest, setting his timer for the right time...” Chen's husband, a genetics professor at a local college, kept pages after pages of “research” on his Happy Farm game, including information about crops, farm friends, farms shops and schedules for each crop's harvest time.

Chen recounted the events of their “fired-up” fight in the late afternoon on November 22nd: “We had agreed that we would make dinner together. I was preparing the vegetables and he was making noodles. All of a sudden, he dropped everything and started for his computer, saying 'Oh shoot, it's harvest time.' I wouldn't let him pass, and he started for the door, stating that he'd harvest on the computer at his office then.” Chen was desperate and angry but felt powerless to stop him; she refused to let her husband pass, and he fought back, trying to break free to go “harvest” his “crops.” Their fight turned physical. “We were throwing everything in sight, pushing and shoving. I kicked over the computer and grabbed a handful of newspaper and lit them. I was thinking that we were going to end this once and for all.”

The fire and the ruckus startled the 3-year old child, and he started wailing. Finally, Chen's husband came to his senses and put out the fire. “If it weren't for the child, our home would've been destroyed,” Chen said despondently.

The two didn't speak to each other the whole evening, but the next morning Chen's husband left the house at 5 am just the same, “to harvest his crops at the office,” Chen explained bitterly.

Source: gcpnews.com

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